Anshun is the city people use as a base for Huangguoshu Falls (see /asia/china/guizhou/huangguoshu), but it merits a night in its own right. It's the main centre of the Buyi ethnic minority, and the old-town market streets retain some of the character that Guiyang's city centre has largely traded away. The Buyi are known for batik — a wax-resist indigo dyeing technique that produces the blue-and-white geometric patterns you'll see on textiles throughout the market. Shitouzhai, a Buyi village of stone houses about 25 kilometres from the city, has been making batik for six centuries and is as authentic as villages in this part of China get.
Huangguoshu itself is 45 kilometres southwest of Anshun, but the city's immediate surroundings hold a second major attraction that most visitors miss: Longgong, the Dragon Palace Caves. The cave system extends 15 kilometres underground, and the standard tour covers it by boat — a flat-bottomed vessel sliding through chambers lit from below, past stalactite formations that have been growing since the Carboniferous. The underground river flows out through a series of limestone arches, and the exit into daylight through one of these arches is one of the better exits from any cave system in China.
The Huajiang Canyon area east of Anshun contains the Duge Bridge, a cable-stayed span 565 metres above the Beipan River that held the record as the world's highest until 2025. The bridge is freely accessible and the perspective looking down into the gorge — with the river a thin silver thread below and mountains continuing in every direction — is genuinely vertiginous. Shitouzhai village, 25 kilometres south of the city, is the most authentic of the Buyi stone settlements, where the wax-resist batik tradition has been practiced for six centuries.
Getting to Anshun is easy: two hours by bus from Guiyang, or slightly faster on the high-speed rail. Most of the worthwhile things require either a taxi or a tourist bus, and the driver-guide arrangement at the bus station is reliable and reasonably priced. Stay at least two nights to cover Huangguoshu, Longgong, and one Buyi village properly.